(bright atmospheric music) - [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(bright atmospheric music) - It takes a special person to build a successful, multi-million dollar, multi-generational real estate development company over more than 60 years.

And that was just one facet of the remarkable career of Tampa Bay business leader, Mel Sembler, who passed away in October, 2023.

For decades, Mel Sembler played a dynamic role in American politics and served overseas twice as a US ambassador all the while, he and his family played prominent roles serving the greater Tampa Bay community.

In October, 2005, WEDU "Suncoast Business Forum" interviewed Ambassador Sembler about his dynamic career.

As a tribute to this one-of-a-kind individual, we are honored to once again share Mel Sembler's story in his own words.

- [Presenter] "Suncoast Business Forum," brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients' financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

(inspiring atmospheric music) - Welcome to the "Suncoast Business Forum," I'm Geoffrey Simon.

If you've been in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina or Puerto Rico for a while, well, chances are you've been in one of The Sembler Company's many developments.

They include a number of Eckerd, Walgreen and CVS drugstores, as well as Clearwater Mall and St. Petersburg's BayWalk.

Over the past 40 years, The Sembler Company's developed more than 250 projects, and last year alone, these projects generated income of more than $300 million.

Now, that's the business side.

Then there's Mel Sembler, the ambassador.

From 1989 to 1993, he was ambassador to Australia and Nauru.

And recently, he just completed a nearly four year term as ambassador to Italy.

Ambassador Sembler, welcome to the "Suncoast Business Forum."

- Thank you, Geoffrey.

Glad to be with you.

- It's great to have you here.

- Thank you.

- Now, imagine you were a young man, say around college age, and I said to you and your young wife, "Imagine someday that you'd be running a large business enterprise, and someday, you'd end up as a US ambassador."

How would you have reacted back then?

- I'd have said it's impossible that it would never happen and never even crossed my mind.

But being successful at business did cross my mind and that was really my goal from the very beginning.

- [Geoffrey] Now, you grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Your father was an immigrant, am I right?

- [Mel] That is correct.

My father came to the United States by himself with a tag on him at age nine from what he called Bessarabia.

And he went to live with his uncle in St. Joe, Missouri and went to the second grade when he had to leave to go to work to support himself.

- Hmm.

- Amazing experience for my father.

He was my idol.

- Well, tell me some of the lessons that you've learned or you learned when you were a young boy and a young man growing up from your father.

- [Mel] Well, both my father and my mother.

My mother was also an immigrant.

She had come from Poland and she came as a very young lady.

She was brought over by her mother and she brought one of her brothers with her and they joined her father.

So it was a little bit easier transition for my mother.

But my father, it has always amazed me.

I mean I wouldn't let my children cross the streets by themself at age nine.

He crossed the world by himself at age nine, (groans) spoke no English, but came to visit and live with his uncle and prospered in this amazing country of ours.

- [Geoffrey] Now, you grew up in St. Joe, but you ended up going to school in Chicago, am I right?

- [Mel] Yes, I went through high school in St. Joe, Missouri and then went to Northwestern University in a suburb of Chicago called Evanston.

- [Geoffrey] And you met your wife to be Betty there?

- [Mel] I met my beautiful wife, Betty, and we've been married some 52 years now.

- [Geoffrey] Well, tell me about Betty.

- [Mel] Betty is a very special person.

Betty is a very intelligent lady with great determination and great direction, and she has been very important in my life and in our family's life and continues to be that.

- Now, what did you do after college?

- Well, when I graduated, the Korean War was on and my wife and I were talking about getting married, but I said, "Sweetheart, we cannot get married until I've got my term up into the military or until at least I know that I'm gonna be in the United States."

So I left the university with my graduate degree and went home and volunteered for the draft.

And the reason I did that is because it was a two year term.

Had I volunteered for the Army, it'd been a three year term.

So I volunteered for the draft and they immediately put me into the Army and I went to Fort Smith, Arkansas.

I learned to be a artilleryman.

I learned how to fire 105 howitzers.

And after I got to be expert at that, they moved me into personnel.

And I never left my training base and stayed there for two years.

Does that sound like the Army?

- [Geoffrey] (laughs) No.

Yeah, now, did you gain a lot from that experience in the military?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

When I saw that I was gonna be stationed permanently, my wife and I got married and we spent almost two years, wonderful years, in Fort Smith, Arkansas during the Korean War.

While we were there, the war ended and it was an amazing experience.

You learn discipline, you learn how to deal with people, you learn relationship issues.

It was very important in our lives.

And we left there.

And after I left the military, we went out to California, spent about six months in California.

My wife did not like living in California.

So we moved back to Kansas City and I decided, well, the big decision was there, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

And I sat down with an uncle of mine, a very successful businessman, and he said, "Mel, you've got to learn how to sell.

Now, it's not easy, but either go into the insurance business or go into specialty advertising business and spend one year.

And at the end of that year, you'll know how to sell."

So I didn't wanna sell insurance, so I decided, all right, I'll go into specialty advertising, I spent one year.

365 days later, I left that job.

But I spent one year and you learn how to sell 'cause you get thrown out a lot of offices.

But it was a great experience and we moved up from that.

And of course I went to the advertising agency business, and then my father-in-law said, "Look, why don't you come down here to Tennessee and let me teach you the retail business?"

And I said, "Well, I don't know if I like the retail business."

He said, "Come down and you'll see.

If you don't like it, then you go do something else."

I spent the next 12 years starting to learn this retail business but learning something else too.

I learned the real estate development business as well, I did that in addition to the retail business.

Started off by building some apartments, built a commercial building for the Volkswagen company and was going to lease it to them, eventually sold it to them.

But something new, Geoff, was coming online in the early '60s, the late '50s and early '60s called shopping centers.

And I was watching that with great interest and convinced my father-in-law that perhaps it's time to bring a shopping center to the small community that he was in.

And that's we began.

So I really started the retail development business in 1962.

We opened our first shopping center in 1965, our second one, 50 miles away in Jackson, Tennessee, or excuse me, in Union City, Tennessee, in 1966, our third shopping center in Jackson, Tennessee in 1967.

So it took about two years for each one of those projects to be developed.

And at that time, it was a very small company, but it was fascinating to watch this new industry and the shopping centers prospered.

- So you went from sales, you went to advertising, you went to retailing and then to real estate development.

- Yes.

- Now, real estate development, you had no previous experience.

It wasn't part of advertising, it wasn't part of the selling experience or retailing.

How did you learn all these things?

- Luckily, I found a mentor who was basically a very senior real estate executive in Memphis, Tennessee who helped educate me.

And he was my partner on the first project and he taught me a great deal.

He's now deceased, as are all my original partners.

But that's how I learned the industry.

And you learn by doing.

But the individual partner was very, very important.

And all my partnerships have been very, very instrumental in me learning because it is a very complicated and difficult field.

- Do you feel mentoring is important?

- [Mel] Absolutely.

- Obviously, it meant a lot to you.

Do you try to mentor others?

- Yes, we do.

In 1967, on my third shopping center, I partnered with the then president of the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Gentleman name was Aaron Aronov and he was from Montgomery, Alabama.

And Aaron convinced me that I needed to get active and join the International Council of Shopping Centers.

He said the whole organization has a very important thing that they live by.

And I said, "What is that?"

He said, "If you have a dollar, Mel, and I have a dollar, and we exchange dollars, neither one of us are any better off, we both still have a dollar.

But if you have an idea and you give me your idea, and I have an idea and I give you my idea, now, we both have two ideas and that's how we share with our colleagues the mistakes we made, the good things that we have.

They're your competitors, but they're colleagues.

And it basically goes to help the industry."

I spent many years, I'm still on the board of directors of the International Council of Shopping Centers and served as its chairman from 1986 through 1987, which is very prestigious that 50,000 members would elect me to be head of their organization.

When you do that, you'd leave your business and you spend a year traveling around the world basically as a spokesperson for the shopping center industry.

It was an amazing experience for me to spend all those years and I was mentored and I hope that I've been a mentor to others.

- So networking and helping others is important.

- [Mel] Yes, well, I have three sons and they're all developers.

- [Geoffrey] (laughs) Well, let's talk about, let's back up from your three sons.

You were in Tennessee when you started in real estate and then you moved to Florida in the 1960, right?

- 1968.

- [Geoffrey] How'd you do that?

- Well, I kinda ran outta towns in West Tennessee.

I had developed in Dyersburg, in Union City and in Jackson.

We had a very large competitor in Memphis, Tennessee.

Instead of moving to Central Tennessee, I decided we'll just move to Florida, why?

Well, Florida had 6 million people then, but 500 people were moving to Florida a day, 600 people a day.

I said, "Hmm, 6 million people, maybe it'll grow.

Maybe that's the place we oughta be.

Because certainly, the more people you have, new people, the more neighborhoods you need.

The more schools you need, the more hospitals you need and the more shopping centers you'll need."

So we relocated here in 1968, originally, we came down and we were involved with a restaurant, a company that we spent a few years with, but that didn't work out.

So we went back into the shopping center development business, began to work on the East Coast of Florida and opened our first one in Fort Smith, Arkansas, excuse me, Fort Pierce, Florida, and then we did Port St. Lucie, Florida and Vero Beach, Florida and Stuart, Florida and Kissimmee and St.

Cloud and so forth and so on.

So we worked really across the state, beginning on the east part of Florida and moved to the West Coast of Florida.

- What was it like being a young father and a young developer at that point in time, the mid 1960s, in Florida's growth?

- It was hard work.

It was getting up early on Monday morning and driving across the state or getting out and selling and doing what you had to do.

And my wonderful wife was just great raising these three boys that we brought down with us from Tennessee and living here in St. Petersburg, Florida.

But we prospered and it took us a lot of time, but we found out that, and of course, that was before the age of computers.

So I would sit home at night, by hand, doing my performers and doing my financial blueprints.

Today, you do 'em in seconds by computer.

It's just amazing.

It would be so much more effective, but then it was much slower and tedious, but very productive.

Isn't it amazing that when I moved to Florida in '68, there were 6 million people?

Today, there are almost 18 million people in Florida.

I mean that's the same number of people in the whole nation of Australia.

And Australia's got a piece of real estate the size of the United States, less than except Alaska.

So it's amazing to have watched this state prosper like it has.

- [Geoffrey] So it's tripled in the 40 years you've been here.

- [Mel] Yes.

- Now, if you were a young man today, let's say a developer, and you looked at Florida, would you still see opportunity?

- Absolutely.

Why?

Because 1,000 people still move to Florida every day.

And so if there's 18 million people today, it doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

- Well, you had a success in your career in Florida very early.

What would you say were some of the elements, if you could look back 40 years and look forward, what were some of the elements of your success?

- Oh, I think relationships are very, very important.

Be able to build confidence with your clients, with your retail clients that you built for.

We had a close association with the Eckerd drug chain that was based right here in our community.

We had a close relationship with the Publix supermarket chain, which is not too far away in Lakeland.

We had one also with the Winn-Dixie chain based up in Jacksonville.

And we built for many other stores, we built for department stores.

We built for JC Penny company, we built for so many of the chains.

Today we're, I guess, the largest developer the Target department store has in the southeast, if not perhaps nationally.

We built an awful lot of Costco stores, which is very popular.

They're in our Clearwater development that we have just recently opened.

We built for Home Depot.

Bernie Marcus, the chairman of the board of Home Depot, makes a joke.

He said, "I couldn't believe you were willing to build our first stores before we even had credit."

But we saw the stores, we understood the future success that Home Depot was going to have because of the success of its store and the way they did business.

So we were very early in building stores for them, still built stores for them today.

So relationships is certainly very important.

Tenacity, also very, very important because you've gotta overcome obstacles every day in the business world.

And so you just can't take no for an answer.

If you're convinced that it's right, then you've got to pursue it and overcome those obstacles on a daily basis.

- Now, over the years, you and your wife and your company have been very, very involved in the community.

How did that begin and how did you find time for all this community involvement that you've done with your very active business schedule?

- Well, we have always been very active.

We've been active in the synagogue.

We've been active with every civic organization, but we have to be kinda passionate about it.

We just can't take on everything.

But if we really have a great feeling for it, then we're willing to give of our time.

Probably the most difficult thing we've ever done in that area would be the creation of the program Straight, which is a drug rehabilitation program for young people that we began, my wife and I and a few other citizens from St. Petersburg began in 1976.

And we've graduated now from the time till we closed the program down in 1993 over 12,000 successful young people who graduated from that program.

And we were just pleased that we were able to accomplish that.

And really, it began because the City of St. Petersburg came to see my wife and I, along with a few of the other citizens, to convince us to help them start this program in the community.

So it began at the request of the City of St. Petersburg.

And I talk about that a lot because when they presented to me the issue and the issue was they said, "Mel, that we've got so serious problem with young people and drugs in our community.

And the problem is that we are rearresting these same young people.

So giving 'em back to the parents is not the answer because we were rearresting the same kids.

Sending 'em to prison is not the answer."

And I said, "Well, what is the answer?"

They said, "We need to have a local program like the SEED program that you helped bring to our community was spent about a year here and was very successful with kids and then left.

And we've been a year without the SEED program here.

Could we start a program here for our local community?"

And I said, "I'm sure you can, and here's how you would structure it, and it's a good idea and I'm happy to give you a check, but I don't have time to get involved with that because I'm busy building shopping centers."

To which my wife said, "Mel, you can build all the shopping centers you can build and still help this program.

And you need to get, you need to do this."

And, of course, after all these years, you turn to your wife and you say, "Yes, dear."

And I said, "I'll give you one year."

And 17 years later, I was still chairman of the board of the operation.

She was absolutely right.

And I guess if you want something done, you see a busy person, but you have to have this burning inside to you think you can really accomplish something and do something that's important.

And if you have this, if this burning desire, then I think you can spend the time and the effort to help a lot of people.

And I'm convinced that Straight did that.

- Well, speaking of burning desire and ambition, you've also, over the years, been very, very active in politics.

- Yes.

- How did your political activism get started and how has it grown over the years?

- Interestingly enough, the anti-drug war kinda brought us into that because we used to be members of the opposite party, we used to be Democrats.

And there's something that happened during the Jimmy Carter administration when his drugs are told America that cocaine was non-addictive, and marijuana was an innocuous drug.

And here we are treating thousands of children for exactly what the White House was saying was non-addictive and innocuous.

And it led us in a position to wait a minute, this party is on the wrong side of this issue.

Couple that with a gentleman who came to see me by the name of Ambassador George Herbert Walker Bush.

And he came in 1979, it was in November, and he wanted to be president of the United States.

And he convinced me that he would be an outstanding president.

And I was convinced, and my family was convinced.

So we did I guess his first fundraiser in Florida at our home here in St. Petersburg, actually, it was at Treasure Island where we'd been living in the same house for 36 years.

And that began our association with the Bush family.

And we looked awfully good in 1980, you know, the following year in Iowa.

But by the time New Hampshire came around, we didn't look so good.

And Ronald Reagan won that nomination for the Republican out of the Republican primary.

But Reagan picked Bush to be his vice president and the vice president and I remained very, very good friends and we got to be friends with the Reagans as well.

And frankly, got Mrs. Reagan involved in the drug war, brought her to St. Petersburg, showed her what we were doing with the young people.

And during that visit, she committed to take on this issue.

So we remained friends with the the Bushes.

And in 1987, Vice President Bush contacted me and he said, "Look, I'm getting ready to run for president and I need you back in my campaign again."

And I said, "Well, Vice President Bush, I'm presently chairman of the International Council of Shopping Centers.

I'll finish my tenure in May of '87, and when I leave that, I'll come over to the campaign."

He said, "Fine."

So I joined the campaign in '87, we worked very hard.

In '88, he was nominated and then elected.

And in early '89, I went to Washington as his finance co-chairman for his inauguration, we had to raise $25 million for his inauguration.

So we did that.

And then the president asked me to go out to Australia and to Nauru as his personal representative, his ambassador, which we did.

So we left in '89 and came back in 1993.

- Well, tell me about your experience, your first ambassadorship to both Australia and Nauru.

- It was an amazing experience.

It took me about six months to really figure it out and to gain the confidence in this amazing staff that I was surrounded with.

There's a good deal of difference, and I'm frequently asked now, well, what's the difference between your time in Australia and your time in Italy?

And they're both amazing experiences because they're both such good allies and good friends.

And the ambassadors, his responsibility is to maintain this relationship, to communicate the messages and the policies of the United States throughout these countries and to try and convince the political leaders of those countries to help support our policies.

So we spent oh, 3 1/2 wonderful years in Australia, traveled all over the country.

The only negative, of course, what we call the tyranny of distance.

When we left St. Petersburg and flew to Canberra, Australia, that capital, would take us 28 hours.

And when we arrived to Canberra, the time was moved ahead 15 hours.

So it was a long way out there, but we were able to have a wonderful relationship with the Australians.

And I frankly feel like that we've strengthened the relationship, as strong as it was, between the United States and Australia.

It's even stronger when we left and even stronger today.

Italy, very, very interesting.

Of course, I went to work for the son later after, of course, I came back from Australia in '93.

And then I went to work.

I did some hard work in politics.

I went immediately to become finance chairman for the Republican Party of Florida.

Then I was elected by the Republican Party of Florida to represent Florida to the National Party.

We call it the Republican National Committee.

And so I was on the board of directors of the National Party.

And then I was on that board for seven years.

And four of those seven years, I was national finance chairman.

So I worked very hard and then I got very enamored with this governor of Texas who I learned to have such great admiration for.

I didn't encourage him in 1993 when he told me he was gonna be running for governor of Texas, I said, "George, your brother's running here in Florida and your brother's a politician in the family."

He reminds me of that conversation with him when he sees me.

But he did such an amazing job his first couple of years and I saw his work as governor and then he got reelected.

Then I asked the Governor Bush to make a trip to Israel, and I led a trip to Israel in 1998.

The Governor Bush at that time, this is Governor George W. Bush, had never been to Israel.

And I took three other governors on that trip with the governor.

And that was his first time there.

First time he met Sharon, Sharon happened to be foreign minister at the time, Bibi Netanyahu was prime minister.

And our tour guide was the foreign minister, Sharon.

And they got to be very good friends on that trip.

And I think perhaps it might've had some influence after Bush was elected president in his policies toward that area, because he realized how small the country really was.

And he used to joke, he said, "Look, you could fly a jet across Israel in two minutes."

He said, "We've got driveways longer than the width of that country in Texas."

And he was really impressed with that trip.

And we strengthened our position and continue to work with Bush.

And he decided he would run for president in 2000 and was successful.

And then he asked me to go out to Italy as his ambassador.

- [Geoffrey] Now, in the two minutes we have remaining, a lot changed in the world once you became ambassador to Italy, 9/11 occurred during this period of time.

We only have about two minutes, but how was your second ambassadorship during this period where so much had changed?

- More difficult, more complicated in many ways.

Remember, when I was in Australia, we had the first Gulf War, when I was in Italy, we had the second Gulf War.

I was sitting in the State Department when the planes hit in New York and hit in Washington at the Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania.

I had to evacuate the State Department at that time.

So when I arrived in Italy a few weeks later, we found a great friend in Italy and they were a great supporter of our anti-terrorism activities.

So Italy has been a wonderfully supportive ally of the United States and friend and continues to be under the leadership of the Berlusconi government.

And John Howard, the prime minister of Australia, continues to be supportive.

So I have had the great fortune of being in two amazingly close friends of the United States as ambassador.

- And last but not least, your company, The Sembler Company, you're still involved, you're the chairman of the company.

- [Mel] Well, they have not burned my desk yet.

And I found out that the more I stayed away, the better they did.

So I just give them a little adult supervision, but they do extremely well.

The boys and Craig Sher and the amazing developers we have with the company.

We have offices now in Atlanta, in Puerto Rico, in Washington, DC and of course in St. Petersburg.

And it has grown and prospered and they do beautiful work.

And they're very responsible developers.

- [Geoffrey] Well, Ambassador Sembler, I wanna thank you for being our guest today and I would like to thank you for joining us for the "Suncoast Business Forum."

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